The largest cities in Russia by population

Russia is a country with a fairly high level of urbanization. For today in our country there are 15 cities with a million population. Which cities in Russia in terms of population are leading at the moment? The answer to this question you will find in this fascinating article.

Urbanization and Russia

Urbanization is an achievement or scourge of our modernity? It is difficult to answer this question. After all, this process is characterized by a huge inconsistency, provoking both positive and negative consequences.

Under this concept, in the broadest sense, is understood the growth of the city's role in human life. This process, breaking into our life in the twentieth century, fundamentally changed not only the reality surrounding us, but also the person himself.

In terms of mathematics, urbanization is an indicator that indicates the proportion of the urban population of a country or region. The countries in which this indicator exceeds 65% are considered highly urbanized. In the Russian Federation, about 73% of the population lives in cities. List of Russian cities by population can be found below.

It should be noted that the processes of urbanization in Russia were (and are) in two aspects:

1. The emergence of new cities that covered new areas of the country.
2. Expansion of existing cities and formation of large agglomerations.

History of Russian cities

In 1897, within the limits of modern Russia, the All-Russian population census counted 430 cities. Most of them were small towns, large at that time there were only seven. And they were all up to the line of the Ural Mountains. But in Irkutsk - the current center of Siberia - there were hardly 50,000 inhabitants.

A century later, the situation with the cities in Russia has changed dramatically. It is possible that the main reason for this was quite reasonable regional policy, conducted by the Soviet authorities in the twentieth century. One way or another, but by 1997 the number of cities in the country had increased to 1,087, and the share of the urban population had risen to 73 percent. At the same time, the number of large cities increased twenty-three times! And today they are home to almost 50% of the total population of Russia.

Thus, only a hundred years have passed, and Russia has transformed from a country of villages into a state of large cities.

Russia is a country of megacities

The largest cities in Russia in terms of population are distributed unevenly across its territory. Most of them are located in the most populated part of the country. Moreover, in Russia there is a stable tendency to form agglomerations. They form the framework (socio-economic and cultural), on which the entire system of settlement is being built, as well as the economy of the country.

850 cities (out of 1087) are located within European Russia and the Urals. By area it is only 25% of the territory of the state. But on the vast Siberian and Far Eastern expanses - only 250 cities. This nuance is extremely complicating the process of developing the Asian part of Russia: the deficit of large megacities is felt here particularly acutely. After all, there are colossal deposits of minerals. However, there is simply nobody to develop them.

The Russian North also can not boast of a dense network of large cities. For this region, the focal distribution of the population is also characteristic. The same can be said about the south of the country, where in mountainous and foothill regions only the lonely and courageous brave cities survive.

So can you call Russia a country of big cities? Of course. Nevertheless, in this country, with its vast expanses and colossal natural resources, there is still a shortage of large cities.

The largest cities in Russia in terms of population: TOP-5

As mentioned above, in the territory of Russia as of 2015 there are 15 cities with a million population. Such a title, as you know, gets that settlement, the number of inhabitants of which has exceeded one million.

So, let's list the largest cities in Russia in terms of population:

1. Moscow (from 12 to 14 million inhabitants according to various sources).
2. St. Petersburg (5.13 million people).
3. Novosibirsk (1.54 million people).
4. Ekaterinburg (1.45 million people).
5. Nizhny Novgorod (1.27 million people).

Next on the list is Kazan, Samara, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Rostov-on-Don. The number of residents in all these cities also exceeds one million.

If you carefully analyze the rating of cities in Russia by population (namely, its upper part), you can notice one interesting feature. This is a fairly large gap in the number of residents between the first, second and third line of this rating.

So, in the capital there are more than twelve million people, in St. Petersburg - about five million. But the third largest city in Russia - Novosibirsk - is inhabited by only one and a half million inhabitants.

Moscow - the largest metropolis of the planet

The capital of the Russian Federation is one of the largest megacities of the world. How many residents live in Moscow - it is very difficult to say. Official sources say about twelve million people, informal - they call other figures: from thirteen to fifteen million. Experts, in turn, predict that in the coming decades the population of Moscow may even rise to twenty million people.

Moscow is on the list of 25 so-called "global" cities (according to Foreign Policy magazine). These are the cities that make the most significant contribution to the development of world civilization.

Moscow is not only a significant industrial, political, scientific, educational and financial center of Europe, but also a tourist center. Four objects of the Russian capital are included in the UNESCO heritage list.

Finally...

In all, about 25% of the country's population live in 15 Russian cities with population over one million. And all these cities continue to attract a growing number of people.

The largest cities in Russia are, of course, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. All of them have significant industrial, cultural, and also scientific and educational potential.